Apple to Modify App Tracking Transparency After German Probe

Germany's competition regulator announced on Monday that Apple has agreed to modify its App Tracking Transparency framework, settling a yearslong investigation into whether the system unfairly disadvantaged third-party app developers. The Federal Cartel Office, or Bundeskartellamt, said the company committed to making its consent prompts for personalized advertising visually and linguistically neutral, removing language and symbols that could discourage users from allowing tracking.

The investigation, which began in June 2022, concluded that Apple's existing system provided more favorable consent screens for its own apps compared with those of external developers, raising potential competition law issues. Under the agreed commitments, Apple must redesign the popups shown to third-party developers to eliminate discouraging wording and symbols. Additionally, developers will gain greater flexibility to combine Apple's required tracking consent request with their own separate data-protection prompts, rather than presenting users with two separate hurdles.

Bundeskartellamt President Andreas Mundt emphasized that the goal was not to increase consent rates for personalized advertising...